


Fissures

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fallen Angels, M/M, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:16:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd anticipated this, in a detached way, that the taking of grace not his own would have consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fissures

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the assumption that Castiel chooses to fall at the end of the season, but also the spoilers about what effects Cas' stolen grace might have on him.

 

_IV_

“I'm dying,” he tells Dean sombrely, voice unstrained but resigned. Resignation has not been much in his character as of late, but today it is. It has to be—there is nothing more he can do. But it is also a new kind of resignation from that which he has known before: he is not bowing to someone else's choices, to the threads of fate left twisted in the wake of his mistakes—no, it is a resignation to his _own_ choice. A choice to mark the end.

Dean's face twists in confusion. “What?”

Castiel almost wants to smile at his denial, his disbelief, but he doesn't. That could easily be read as callous instead of proof of his affection, and he can't afford to be misunderstood at this juncture. Not today, not anymore.

“I'm dying, Dean,” he repeats quieter, but louder, too, somehow, as it resonates in the cavity of his aching chest.

Dean huffs a wearied laugh, still misunderstanding. “Yeah, aren't we all.”

“No,” Castiel corrects kindly. “ _Now_.”

Dean's face slowly falls, as a sober sort of fear encompasses him. Castiel feels it, too, though not quite in the same way. “Cas?” he asks, voice cracking with concern. Castiel wonders if is heart is cracking, too. Today is the day, after all, where everything fall apart. Castiel's own being is cracking open at the core of him, even if Dean can't see it.

“What the hell is going on?” he asks again, this time with a more obvious edge of desperation.

“Don't worry,” Castiel says, and lifts a gentle hand to Dean's cheek as a reminder to Dean or to himself, he does not know which. Perhaps both. He wants to remember the shape of every pore on Dean's skin, to commit the colour of his eyes and the roughness of his stubble to memory, in case it doesn't feel the same way again, if there is an _again_. He wants there to be. Oh, does he _want_ it. But before any beginning, there must first be an end.

“I'll see you again soon,” he says his own voice fraying, too (hope is a painful thing, he finds), and then bursts apart.

 

 

 

_V_

In the beginning, there was _light_.

 

 

 

_I_

Castiel first suspects something is wrong the moment he engulfs his brother's stolen grace, but he does not allow himself to think about it until much later. Not even when he admits to Dean his barbaric actions on the phone does he let himself analyse the likely after effects waiting for him on the horizon. The future is too far an idea in the midst of civil war: there is only the here, the now, and _now_ , Castiel must find his brethren, and find out what's going on.

He only first realises quite what is happening to him as he heals Sam. His new grace is capable of doing the job, but it stings his hands as its power escapes him, in the way an open wound might, if opened wider. He heals Sam but feels his grace unravelling in the process, and his poor, pitiful, half-grown soul withering at its touch.

At first, he brushes the sensation off as residue of Gadreel, of his insidious poison and unfamiliar grace, but he quickly realises the sensation is from within. He'd anticipated this, in a detached way, that the taking of grace not his own would have consequences.

In many ways it's the same phenomenon as an angel in an unsuitable body: the body rejects it. Castiel's vessel is not the vessel for this tarnished, wearied grace of another. It does not fill the void of where once writhed his own, and it does not hold the human part of him together, as he'd taught his old grace to do. No, it does not know what to do with the nascent soul sitting among it, nor the fact that it was taken and not invited. There's too much grey to see much of anything at all among its messy mire, but Castiel can _feel_ the wrongness of it. He feels a duel guilt and disgust that's overpowering, but perhaps moreover _sad_ , for he also knows he _needs_ it. He needs it for what battles are to come, and yet, it might destroy him. That is not a happy fact.

He leaves before Dean comes home, for Castiel doesn't want to face himself just yet, and Dean always makes him all too aware of his own heart.

Oh, Naomi was right in far more ways that Castiel ever gave her credit for. He ways always cracked open in more ways than one.

 

 

 

_II_

The final battle looms heavy on Castiel's shoulders, heavier yet with the knowledge that so many of his siblings still look to him for leadership. This is never what he wanted for them, to be followers instead of for and of _themselves_ , but then again... It is their _choice_ to follow him, this time. They are not being blackmailed or coerced. Castiel, for all his wariness, cannot begrudge them that. So he rises to their trust as best he can, he owes them that much. He does not know if he can reclaim them their spot in heaven—perhaps not even Metatron himself knows if that can be done, but there is no excuse not to _try_. He does not tell any of his sisters and brothers about the ticking bomb at the core of him, but he wonders if they can sense it, the way some of them look at him with a respectful sort of sadness, as if in preparation to mourn.

There is, however, no time to voice that worry. And if Castiel should fall in battle, well—by now he thinks he is quite used to falling.

 

 

 

_III_

Falling in and of itself is never the tragedy, Castiel thinks. It is the idea that you are leaving some place high for some place lower, whether Heaven for Earth, or the air for the ground. The pain is not in the fall but in the _impact_ , and the fallout afterwards, if you even live to see it. No, falling itself is never the problem—it's only a different sort of flying, after all; the direction is semantics.

Humans, some of them, even fall for _sport_ , it is so exhilarating. Castiel has seen them: people jumping out of planes for the sheer excitement of surrendering oneself to gravity. They jump not for the landing, but for the journey downwards, and that, Castiel thinks, is somewhat of a remarkable thing. He wishes falling from grace were that easy.

But, like any kind of descent, it is not the _process_ so much as the _sum_ of it—he can take the pain of being pulled apart from within but only until the precipice of explosion. Once that point is reached, there is no return. And that is what Castiel stands on the edge of now.

This time, though, is different from the other abysses he's stood over in his many lifetimes. For this time, he is standing on a _bridge_ , and below him, on either side, are two very different chasms. One of them, he thinks, is a rather shorter fall.

He has been human before, after all. Perhaps he is _still_ human—Castiel doesn't think that part ever truly left him. And perhaps that has been the point all along: humanity is not a state of _being_ but a state of _mind_ , of soul, or whatever other word these human tongues have for the will of the heart. Castiel has a will and a mind and a choice of where to take himself, and for the first time, in a long time, it seems like a very easy choice.

Castiel steps off.

 

 

 

_VI_

“Cas!” Castiel hears Dean scream, voice ragged and hoarse from overuse. Has he been yelling all this time? Castiel does not know how long he has been unconscious, only that as he blinks his eyes open, his head _hurts_. Ah, pain, what an annoyingly familiar feeling. Castiel squints up at the face of his concerned friend.

“What the _fuck_ , man? Are you alright?” Dean asks, helping him sit up. Castiel looks around him, and he is still where he was before he let his borrowed grace go. He must not have been out that long, if Dean did not thank to move him. Well, that recovery was certainly speedier than he had anticipated. He is pleased.

Pleased and _tired_ apparently, for as soon as Dean's supporting hand leaves him, Castiel collapses backwards again, too winded and aching and exhausted to support himself. His lungs contract and expand in heaving breaths— _his lungs_ , powered by his beating heart and firing neurons in his brain.

Castiel laughs in giddy relief. “I'm alive,” he says, half in disbelief, blinking up at the sun. His arms are splayed on the ground and Castiel can feel dirt beneath his fingertips. He cannot distinguish the individual molecules that coat his skin anymore, but he can feel the _sum_ of it. He can feel the grit and dusty of the solid Earth and Castiel knows if he reached up and cupped Dean's face he'd feel the sum of _him_ too. What a glorious equation.

“Yeah,” Dean laughs breathily with him. “Yeah, you are.”

“I'm alive,” he repeats again. “Good. That's—very good.”

 

 

 

_VII_

In the beginning, there was an end. And it was _good_.


End file.
